Topic: Returnal

@MatthewJP Yeah, don’t worry — I think Phrike might be the toughest boss. Not because she’s hard per se, because going back to fight her later I found her quite easy and her moves are pretty standard and telegraphed for the most part once you see enough of it. She’s hard because she’s first and it’s a huge threshold getting past her, and everything really starts to click better afterward, imo. Like Thrillho says, watch some YouTube videos on the fight. There are a couple good ones where they slow down the attacks and tell you methods to avoid them, etc. To me it’s comforting to see videos where the player fairly easily beats the boss, even with the starter pistol.

Go and clear the whole or most of the level and get your health up, hopefully you get an astronaut, and have a large health vial. I’m sure you’ve don’t that already, but hang in there. I was once there and I can’t remember my time (I think I posted it way back somewhere on this thread) but I think I was around 12 hour or so before I beat Phrike, with about 1.5-2 deaths per hour like where you are. I’m not that good of a gamer, just average, but now I can plow through Biome 1 pretty easily. Biome 2 is fantastic and probably my favorite Biome, so hopefully you get there soon!

@NedStarksGhost congrats! What a fantastic ending to Act 2, eh?

@render thank you!

@Voltan @Th3solution thanks both. Would never have known to do any of this without help.

@MatthewJP just to repeat what others have said, you'll get used to it. Having had similar thoughts playing Dark Souls (can't actually say I had the same issues on Returnal), my advice is when you first fight the boss take a step back and just try and dodge the moves and anticipate before worrying about damage. Just get a feel for what's happening.

After that, start doing damage, and from then on you will get used to it.

You'll get to the point where all these different challenges won't affect you as much because you'll have the in the back of your mind. That first boss I know gives a lot of people grief because it's such a shift to how you approach things.

Arrrgggghh! Still biome 1. One of those runs where the boss room is right at the end of every possible room you can go through. By that time I'd got a level 3 carbine (good for me), fair bit of increased integrity, an astronaut, went back to the reconstructor as I thought this could be 'the one'.
The final room which would then lead to Phrike went into lockdown and spawned 4 mycomorphs and 2 malformed kerberonyx and I got cornered. Christ alive.

@MatthewJP whoah.

@MatthewJP sounds like you would have made it! I don’t think I’ve ever seen than room.

After all that, I've just beaten Phrike with a level 2 pistol (and astronaut)!

@MatthewJP Nice one! (To me) Phrike is the hardest one!

@MatthewJP that sucks, sounds really unlucky. Keep persevering, you'll do it!

Edit: see, told you! (What timing)

Good job!

2 ciphers away from the plat! One in the citadel, and one in the wastes!

@MatthewJP Yay!! You did it!

I think your experience underscores something I’ve noticed when playing the game, that is — when I am having what I think is a good run, sometimes I die unexpectedly, usually a bad lock-down room situation, or doing something stupid like falling off a ledge a few times or something.

Then sometimes I think it’s a mediocre run but I just keep plugging away and before I know it I’ve beaten a boss. So it really is worth it to just keep plugging on a run, as sometimes you think it’s a trash run and then the next room has a boatload of health and one of those health regenerating beds and an item that is fabulous like the one that health you per damage dealt, and before you know it you’re carving through those enemies and you’re at the boss with a loadout where you say, “hey, I might just do this..” and then you do, and it feels so good!

@Just_2_milky My last ones were in Biomes 2 and 3. They took ages to appear aswell!

For anybody trying to get the plat, don’t do more than 2 runs a day. It’s helping me not get burnt out, and each day you come back saying “maybe today I’ll get that cipher”

@Just_2_milky The only problem being that two runs could be anywhere from 20 mins to 4 hours!

@Thrillho When I was looking for the last scout log I needed, my runs were more like 2 minutes lol

@Thrillho yeah, I’ve been doing quick runs through 2 & 3 and the runs are lasting around an hour and a half

@MatthewJP Awesome work, that’s a great achievement!! Definitely worth persevering with it and you’ve done amazingly well considering you just used the pistol.

@Just_2_milky It took me ages to get the one I was missing in B2. I was doing speed runs of a fashion where I’d try and miss as much as I could out of B1 and B2 before doing the top level of B2. It was quick and still fun but meant I could get a few more runs in. Took me 18 from when I started counting.

I’ve only had time for a few play sessions this week, but I’m so near the end of Act 3 that I can taste it. One more fragment to go. I played late into the night and looked everywhere in the Abyssal Scar, had a really great run with tons of health and I just couldn’t find the %@*#! thing. I finally had to just shut down my run because it was late and my sleep is already ruined and I’m going to be hating myself today at work.

I do think if I had the time I’d like to try the platinum because the game still feels great to play and the moment to moment gameplay is still fun. I’m almost at 3 days (72 hrs) on the game clock, with around 90 deaths so far. But given I’ve got a ton of backlog, I’ll probably just move on after the end of Act 3. The game feels like one that I could come back to now and again and play in short spurts if I want to though.

@Th3solution You know those areas with a narrow broken walkway, some traps (either those eye-searchlight thingies or the ones raining red orbs) and a chest at the end of a path? Look behind the chest (you have to jump to a little area that doesn't appear on the map).
It's not guaranteed to be there but it's the only place it can be. There's also a datacube there if you haven't picked it up yet.